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Friday the 13th Part III is directed by Steve Miner,
and stars Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, and Richard Brooker.
The musical score is composed by Harry Manfredini and Michael
Zager. ***
If you’ve seen any other film in this series, the plot
will instantly be familiar to you. Jason, the psychotic,
mysterious killer, is out for blood once again. Yet another
new group of teens is the latest in the killer’s long line
of victims. And as always, it’s up to them to escape – or
be killed in the process. ***
Part III is unlike the earlier two entries in the series
in that it got a 3D theatrical release – plenty of films
in this era were trying to cash in on a revival of the whole
3D thing. The film, on the other hand, is the same thing
we saw twice b efore this. Sure, Jason has a shiny new hockey
mask (which is now as iconic as the Jason character himself),
but anyone who has seen the first two films won’t really
find anything new in this third installment. ***
It’s not really worth going in detail to describe the
plot of the film, or how the end result turns out. It is
what it is. Yet another in a long line of slasher movies.
Sure the 3D is cool, as is Jason’s now-legendary hockey
mask, but they can’t disguise the fact that this is the
same old story all over again. Fans of the series and genre
will want to pick this one up, but there’s no denying it
– this is practically the same thing as the first two films
apart from the 3D. ---
Image and Sound:
Finally, we get the film with 2D and 3D versions in
one convenient place! The 2D port of the film on this Blu-Ray
has picture quality on par with the first two films in the
series – a bit soft and grainy, but much cleaner and less
damaged than older DVD pressings. The 3D version is the
best-looking home video port of the 3D version of the film
to date, but that doesn’t change the fact that it still
looks inferior to the way these effects looked on a theater
screen nearly three decades ago. Still, it looks and sounds
great for what it is. ***
Again, audio gets a boost to TrueHD, but don’t expect
a sonic improvement over earlier DVD versions’ sound quality.
Still, it seems that with each subsequent Friday the 13th
film released on Blu, the audio is slightly better than
the previous film (2 sounded better than 1, 3 better than
2, etc.) Ultimately, it’s a good transfer.
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| Special
Features: |
We get fare similar to the first two films. A handful
of featurettes detailing behind-the-scenes aspects of the
films, newly-filmed “lost films”, and the theatrical trailer
in HD. It’s the kind of stuff the fans are going to love,
but you’ll wish they’d ditched the lost films and put more
focus into making the definitive behind-the-scenes featurette,
with more interview footage with the cast.
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